Growing demand for delivery of video content poses one of the biggest challenges in mobile communications. Providing live video content may be even more challenging in certain situations. One example of such a situation is air travel, and it is becoming increasingly popular and necessary to provide in-flight video services to passengers and video teleconferencing for business travelers.
Certain aircraft satellite television systems have been developed to provide in-flight entertainment to passengers. Such systems may utilize antennas for receiving signals from satellites that provide television programming to passengers. While television programming may be provided utilizing such systems, they are very expensive to develop/operate. Furthermore, the satellites utilized for providing the television programming generally are the highest in EIRP (Effective Radiated Power) in order to close the link with inherently small antenna on the aircraft. Leasing high EIRP satellites is expensive.
Conventional ground-based cellular networks may provide a low-cost broadband option for delivery of video contents. Communication standards such as Long Term Evolution (LTE), 3GPP, UMTS, WiMax and other 4G and 5G type technologies may utilize next generation mobile broadcasting, variants or TCP to deliver live video over cellular networks. Therefore, it may be appreciated to provide the ability for an aircraft to seamlessly communicate with ground-based cellular networks to provide in-flight delivery of one or more video programs/channels.